


Go Forget Your Father

by Atlas_M_33



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Damn Atlas back at it again with the weird writing style, Gen, Mark of Cain (Supernatural), Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22189342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlas_M_33/pseuds/Atlas_M_33
Summary: Dean may have Cain’s Mark, but he won’t follow Cain’s story.He’s been writing his own since he was four, and he’s not planning on stopping any time soon.
Relationships: Cain & Dean Winchester, Cain/Colette Mullen, Castiel & Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	Go Forget Your Father

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been working on this for a while and I’m super excited to finally set it free. This idea hatched during my Season 10 rewatch, when I came back to my love of Dean/Cain parallels and decided I needed in on that Right Now Immediately. 
> 
> Please consider commenting when you’re done, comments motivate like nothing else!

1.

_The sun bears down on the desert and Cain kneels over his brother in the dirt, holding the crude blade that he’s fashioned out of bone overhead. He’s kneeling over his brother, his little brother who he loves, and there are tears running down both of their faces but he can’t think about that right now. Not with the Devil whispering in his ear, promising him Abel’s soul in Heaven for his in Hell._

_Not with the new Mark on his arm, burning and searing and whispering its own madness to him, softly, like a thought he forgot to have._

_He kneels over his little brother, and he closes his eyes and he brings the Blade down and he sends Abel’s soul up. Later, God will ask him “Where is your brother?” and His voice will be filled with fury because He already knows._

_Later, Cain will look to God and tell Him “I do not know. I am not my brother’s Keeper.” and it will be a lie that haunts him for just as long as his brother’s terrified face, eyes clamped shut as the Blade descends._

6.

It is 2015 and you are fighting the Father of Murder in a barn to keep him from killing you and a kid and a tenth of the damn world. You look him in the eyes, and he circles and circles and he tells you all the ways you’re going to murder the people in your life. 

He tells you that they will die for his curse, that the King of Hell will die and your Angel will die and your Brother will die. 

He tells you that you will be the one to do it. 

The Mark thrashes against your control like a thing possessed, fueled by the presence of its twin (fueled by the presence of its _brother_ ) but you’ve fought off worse things than this. In the end, you cut off his hand and you stab him in the back. In the end, you stumble down the stairs and you give the Blade to Cas. 

In the end you walk away, and the entire time the Mark screams at you for its solitude. It is tired of being alone.

5.

_Cain murdered his brother and his wife and his Knights, back in B.C. and 1863 and now it is 2013 and he knows that bloodshed is inevitable. The universe is turning back in on itself, and when you’re as old as he is you’ve learned to listen. Events are repeating, and things that once were are again._

_Cain sits at his coffee table, serving tea to a demon and a Legend, and he listens to the whispers, and he thinks about actions and consequences and all the things he regrets._

_And then he leans forward and gives Dean Winchester the Mark anyway, because it’s been 6000 years since the Desert and 150 years since Colette, and he is tired of being alone._

7.

You let Crowley crawl back to his hole and the Mark itches right down to the bone. He is bitter, but he will be back because he doesn’t have what he wants yet 

He doesn’t have the Blade that you’ve just given to your Angel. 

He doesn’t have you, and the demon you won’t let yourself become. 

2.

_Cain kills his brother, and in his mind it may have been noble but the blood still stains his hands, thick and dark and clinging to his skin even though he scrubbed it off minutes or hours or lifetimes ago. It clings to his skin, as he leaves the desert, as he lies to God, because he’s going to Hell anyway, and what can God do to him now?_

_Of course, that’s when he finally finds the small print on his deal with the Devil._

_God won’t let him die._

8.

You come to your senses and you’re kneeling over your Angel with a blade in your hand that’s not the Blade and his hand clutching at your wrist as you hold him down. You reel back, ready to sink the knife into his chest, ready to just finally _let go-_

You bury it in the floor instead, and beat down the part of you that wants to pick it back up and finish the job.

When you walk away from Castiel there’s an ache building in your knuckles. Your blood roils in your veins at his absence, but you leave him behind again, just like you always do. 

This isn’t what you wanted. It’s not even close. You wanted Abbadon dead and Sammy safe and Castiel whole and healthy once more. You wanted to drive old highways in your Baby and eat pie and save people and hunt things. You wanted to carry on the Family Business. 

Your hand is shaking again, and every time you close your eyes the little sister you loved is looking back at you with scared eyes and blood dripping down her face, red as her hair, red as the Mark-

You clench your fist, and you carry on. 

3.

_Cain kills his wife, and it may have been an accident but it is only the first drop of a flood. He had been livid when he’d discovered her taken, his rage incandescent in a way it hadn’t been in centuries, and he’d known at that moment that someone would die that night. But he’d moved too quickly and too slowly all at once, and it isn’t Abbadon’s dying body that he cradles against his own._

_Cain holds Colette against his chest and weeps, weeps like he hasn’t since he laid his brother to his rest in the sand, and then he picks her up, and digs a grave behind their home, and he lays her to rest in the dirt._

_Colette is dead, and just like Abel, her soul is in Heaven and he’ll never see her again._

_It’s for the best. He doesn’t want her to know what he’s become._

9.

You look down at your brother where he’s kneeling on the floor of an abandoned bar at the end of the line, and he looks up at you. He looks up at you, the way he used to when you were kids, the way he hasn’t had to since his final growth spurt, and he won’t close his eyes. He holds the pictures out to you, memories of a better time and a better place and a better Dean Winchester, and he asks you to remember what it was like to love him more than anything else in the world.

Sammy won’t close his eyes, so you close yours instead, and you take a deep breath, and- 

-and then you swing the scythe in the wrong direction, and you remember.

4.

_Cain kills his Knights, guts them one at a time in retribution, and it was justice and revenge and a favor to the world, but he still locks himself away to hide from the blood and the guilt and the rage and the shame of it. He builds a house and he tends to his bees and he watches his flowers grow. He stays away from people and the world and he lets himself pretend that everything will be fine._

_He should have known better. God didn’t have mercy on him when this all started, and He definitely doesn’t have any to spare now. That’s one thing that was never going to change._

_That’s one constant in a Universe playing on a loop._

10.

You stand over your brother with Death whispering in your ear, promising you Sammy’s soul in Heaven for yours far, far away from here. You have the scythe in you hand and the Mark on your arm, and it whispers its madness to you softly, like a thought you forgot to have, but-

You do not kill him. You are not Cain. 

Instead, you swing the scythe at its owner. Instead, you drop to your knees and you cradle him close. 

The world is cold and cruel, but you are your brother’s Keeper. You have held his soul in your hands since he was 6 months old, and you will tear yourself and this world apart before you let anything happen to him. Before _you_ do anything to him.

11.

You have Cain’s blood and his Mark and his story, but you are not his mirror. This is _your_ story. It’s been yours since you and your brother and a trenchcoated Angel stopped the Apocalypse That Wasn’t. 

It’s been yours since the moment your Father put a baby named Sammy in your arms and told you to run. 

You spare the King, and the whispers that remain of the Knights of Hell shriek as they fade away to nothing. You save your Angel, and somewhere in Heaven Colette falls to her knees weeping for a reason that she doesn’t know. And here, now, in this filthy bar with your little brother on his knees in front of you, you tell God and the Devil and Death himself to fuck off. 

This is your story now, and in your story, in your version of Cain and Abel, no one dies but the ones pitting you against each other. Instead, you walk out of the desert, hand in hand with your brother. Instead, you turn your backs on Fate together.

You’ve already ripped up the ending of this Great Story more times than you can count. 

What’s one more?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for sticking around! Kudos motivate me and comments telling which lines were your favorite make me cry!


End file.
